*** Résumé en anglais seulement ***
Mavis Staples's earthy contralto was the Staple Singers' prime asset, and she finally recorded her first solo album in 1969. That album, Mavis Staples, was a tentative, unconvincing collection of pop standards like Dionne Warwick's "A House Is Not a Home," Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" and a pair of Otis Redding songs. The followup, 1970's Only for the Lonely, was much better, yielding the R&B hit "I Have Learned to Do Without You," the exquisite slow blues "How Many Times" and the finger-snapping Memphis soul of "It Makes Me Wanna Cry." Now the 20 tracks from those two albums have been combined on a single CD entitled Only for the Lonely (Stax), and supplemented with "That's the Way Love Is," a duet with Johnny Taylor from Boy Meets Girl, a Stax collection of male-female duets. This isn't Mavis Staples's best work--she went on to do much better singing with her family and on her own--but it's an invaluable glimpse at the first solo steps by one of America's finest singers --Geoffrey Himes --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Audio CD.